City of San Jose union workers and supporters on Monday offered a collection of proposals they claim will solve the city’s budget crisis while limiting service cuts and layoffs. While the plan is short on details, it’s good to see workers offering alternatives, and some ideas may be promising. However, the plan falls short of a complete solution because it relies too heavily on short-term strategies.

The centerpiece is $25 million in worker concessions through increased pension contributions for the next two years. But the city is facing its ninth year of deficits that are projected to continue into the middle of the decade. When 2012 rolls around, that $25 million will be tacked right back onto the deficit, already projected to be $18 million.

That’s the very definition of kicking the can down the road.

Labor leaders say it doesn’t make sense to try to solve long-term budget problems in the middle of a recession. They also believe the economy will improve enough over time to solve the problem. But the city’s projections already include expectations of some improvement. Only a surge like the dot-com bubble could solve all of San Jose’s budget problems in two years.

We’ll need to learn more before judging how some of the union proposals dovetail with cuts already proposed by the city manager. For instance, one idea is to eliminate a majority of 164 vacant positions. Haven’t administrators already looked at these to determine which are essential? How does that analysis differ from the unions’?

Similarly, the unions propose the elimination of some “low-priority items.” But the city went through an extensive process involving the community to identify low- and high-priority services. How does labor’s definition of low-priority differ from the city’s?

Other ideas in the proposal seem to have more promise, including the reduction, if not the elimination, of the unemployment insurance reserve fund if layoffs can be minimized, and the use of a small portion of other reserve funds.

As more details on these ideas become available, perhaps they’ll seem more workable. In any case, it’s good to see the beginning of what we hope will be a constructive dialogue. The deadline for budget passage is barely over a month away.

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